The Sekkatine souk! It felt as if this place was his father’s real home, while their abode in the Spring of Horses indisputably fell under his mother’s jurisdiction. The idea of splitting his life between two homes troubled him. Which one drew him in and comforted him more? One the one hand, Ghita ran the family nest in an orderly and reassuring way; on the other, while his father’s place also had its constraints, it was vitally linked to the city, teeming with life and receptive to echoes from the outside world: the countryside, other cities, the world beyond. And Driss, a respected craftsman, was at the center of all that.
The Sekkatine souk was deserted and all the shops were locked up. Only the watchman was there, lying half asleep on a sack of jute in front of the entrance. Though the watchman eyed Namouss suspiciously at first, he realized he was Maâllem Driss’s son and so asked after him.
“Yak labass? How is your father?”
“Labass, labass,” Namouss replied, albeit begrudgingly, feeling as though he was being spied on. Namouss had wanted the place all to himself on this most unusual of visits, whose purposes were unknown even to himself.
Turning his back to the watchman, he pushed on through the souk. The row of shuttered shops made him uneasy. Usually he could walk through the market blindfolded and know which shop belonged to whom: his uncle Si Mohammed; the stirrup-maker Meslouhi; the craftsmen Berdaï, Chardane, Amine Rabiî; the shopkeeper Tahiri brothers: Sid Louadi and Sidi Hafid; the Sebtis: Mohammed Lehsiki and his son Haji Mohammed the Younger, a.k.a. the “Screw”; the guild master Haji Abderrahmane Sekkat; etc. His father’s shop was situated right in the middle of the market, just in front of Doukkali’s, the barber-circumciser. Namouss could fill a whole gallery with the portraits of these men. There were kind and not-so-kind men among them, loudmouths and diffident ones, greedy ones and those happy just to make a living, jokers and suckers, those green with envy and those blessed by luck, bashful and cheeky ones, slow and speedy ones, drudges and perfectionists. There was never a dull moment when the Sekkatine was in full swing.
Very early in the morning, it opens. Each shop has an elevated door, with one shutter on the top and one at the bottom. After the lower one is unlocked with a large key, the top shutter is pushed up and fixed in place with the help of a thick wooden stick. A rope hanging from the ceiling allows one to hoist oneself into the shop like an acrobat. The workbench is set at chest level. Only the barber has succumbed to the sirens of modernity. His shop doors open sideways and — the epitome of luxury — are accessed via a series of steps.
That was where Namouss sat to catch his breath and once more lose himself to daydreaming. A smile began to form on his lips. He remembered the mornings when business was slow in the souk — and especially the pleasantries exchanged with the craftsmen who turned up late to work, rosy-cheeked and still wrapped in a towel. That they had just come from the hammam did not escape their co-workers. Once the man in question had opened his shop and laid his towel on the stick that held up the canopy, the jokes were rattled out in quick succession.
“Aha! Someone’s sure taken his time over his major ablutions!”
“I hope the water was warm.”
“Did the masseur look after you well then?”
“La-di-da, maâllem.”
“He must have worn out the lady of the house this morning. How will she get through all the day’s chores now?”
“And the midday meal will surely be ample. These things usually awaken the appetite.”
“May God give us just a bit of your zeal.”
“You must look after your health, maâllem.”
“We should keep an eye out for a second wife for him, just in case the first one throws in the towel.”
The fellow would take the teasing in stride and with good humor, seeming to accept it as an homage to his virility. He knew that the joke would be on someone else the following day. That was how the working day started off in high spirits.
Namouss didn’t understand any of this secret language when he first started frequenting the souk. He didn’t get why paying a visit to the hammam and having a passion for cleanliness should be so embarrassing. He didn’t know the difference between major and minor ablutions,6 that is until Si Daoudi, the Arabic teacher, shed some light on the matter. The lesson broached the subject of prayers and the ritual purification they required. Minor ablutions would suffice in this case, unless the worshipper in question invalidated them by urinating or breaking wind immediately preceding the hour of prayer. Major ablutions were only necessary in cases of “extreme filthiness.” The dutiful Muslim would then have to go to the hammam to cleanse himself. The teacher had limited himself to these cryptic stock phrases, but when confronted by a bold student’s insistence that he elaborate, he explained further that this “filthiness” occurred when a man got together with a woman.
“One shouldn’t be ashamed when it comes to religious matters. You bunch of philistines should keep in mind that without this sort of lawful intercourse, none of you would have come into this world.”
Ever since, while Namouss didn’t know all the ins and outs of these lewd innuendos, he at least could gather what they were about, and above all dreaded the day when it would be Driss’s turn to become the butt of everyone’s jokes.
Namouss would only go to the souk in the morning on rare occasions. That would only happen if Ghita sent him on an errand, or when he finally consented — and only after putting up a struggle — to having his hair cut, leaving his precious locks behind in Doukkali’s shop. Namouss had a bone to pick with Doukkali. The memory of his circumcision was still fresh in his mind. Not that he resented the operation. He had, after all, longed to be like all the other children. In the months leading up to the operation, the friends of his who had already been through the procedure began teasing him about the end of his willy that hung down a bit too far. What he rebuked Doukkali for was his underhanded ways. When Namouss had finally decided to put a brave face to the operation, the barber had resorted to subterfuge.
“Look at the little green bird chirping away up there!” he’d said.
As soon as Namouss had lifted his gaze to look for the bird with the rare color, Doukkali swooped down with his scissors.
Namouss also resented him for more mundane reasons. Namouss almost had a heart attack each time Doukkali cut his hair. Using stubborn tufts of hair as an excuse, he wouldn’t stop shearing until Namouss was almost bald. Namouss didn’t dare utter an objection, and the moment he got out of there, he was mortified to catch sight of himself, having been shorn like a sheep. He also couldn’t stand the noxious smell emanating from the barber’s hands, the man clearly never washed his hands after going to the bathroom. It was tough going. Namouss had to hold his breath to the point of near suffocation. It was a real relief when the barber sprinkled talcum powder on his head and around his ears, before giving him a once-over with a soft brush and standing back to admire his handiwork.
“Look at you, you look just like a newlywed!”
But bad memories of the Sekkatine were few and far between. The afternoons, for example, were splendid. Namouss used to love hoisting himself into his father’s shop just before rush hour and resting his elbows on the workbench to watch him work. From these moments, Namouss’s olfactory memory stored a variety of smells: goatskin, calfskin, hemp yarn, wax, natural or colored wool, bits and stirrup irons, wood, some flour-based adhesive, and of course snuff, which Driss, like the majority of people in the Sekkatine, consumed vast quantities of. His father’s smell was a subtle mix of all these odors. What fascinated him most, however, were Driss’s hands, which were large for a man his size and so agile that they seemed to act independently of his body. He wore leather thimbles on his thumb and middle finger, making them appear unusually long in comparison to the others. The callused hand he slammed down on the saddle to reinforce the seams was as strong as a hammer. Namouss admired these displays of Driss’s energy and ingenuity. He knew those hands were blessed, that they both fed and protected him.